by Janice Molloy
Early in my career, I worked for the college division of a textbook publishing company. The editorial, design, production, and marketing departments occupied one floor of a mid-size office building. Whether intentional or not, this arrangement was brilliant. I can't even calculate how many problems were solved or ideas were generated during chance conversations with colleagues from other functions at the common coffee pot. That $.25 a cup was a small investment for the sharing of knowledge and building of insight that took place time and again.
With the rise of technology, for many of us, these kinds of serendipitous connections are harder to come by than before. More and more people are working out of their home offices, as independent contractors and consultants, or in virtual organizations. As useful as email, Skype, Twitter, and shared online documents can be, they can't replace random encounters at the copy machine or lively discussions over the lunch table. What we have gained in flexibility, efficiency, and independence, we may have lost in terms of a sense of community and unplanned synergies.
To contribute toward filling this gap, we're launching a shared workspace in the Pegasus offices in Waltham, MA, for people interested in systems thinking and other change management 
methodologies. The Pegasus workspace is a part-time alternative for those who want to get out of their home offices once or twice a week, for people who travel to the Boston area for business and regularly need a place to land for a few hours, or for trainers and consultants looking to use a conference room for presentations, meetings, or small workshops.
The plan is to co-create an open, creative working environment where people have access to the resources, help, contacts, advice, partnerships, and inspiration they need to achieve their goals and objectives. Together, we'll plan brown-bag lunches and other opportunities for learning and collaboration. We'll meet each other in the hall or while heating our lunches in the office microwave. The goal is to get our work done in an environment suited to building community and transforming our ideas into action.
If you're interested in exploring the possibilities, you can find details here. We're holding an open house on April 12, 2010--drop in any time between 12:30 and 6:30 p.m., or call to set up a time to come by. We're also conducting a free trial week April 19-23.
Do you know of shared workspaces in other regions and practice areas? What principles/guidelines can lead to success?
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
By Becky Smith
I've recently been studying leadership models, with the intent of picking the top 10 and comparing them to my two favorites, The Leadership Challenge by Posner and Kouzes and the organizational learning model and treatise on leadership by Senge in his 2006 edition of The Fifth Discipline. In the process, I stumbled upon a quirky little book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, by Seth Godin.
Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and change agent. In Tribes, Godin paraphrases the Peter Principle; his version reads, "In every organization everyone rises to the level at which they become paralyzed with fear." Fear of criticism, blame, and lack of faith are the stumbling blocks that prevent many from assuming a leadership role. Godin believes that, because of this fear, many of us are content to be followers, to push harder and harder without achieving tangible results.
His notion is that people need to break free from this constraint and embrace their roles as leaders, from wherever they sit in an organization. And the most effective way to make a difference is to find or assemble a "tribe" and lead it. According to Godin, a tribe is a group of people who are connected--to each other and to a leader--by a shared interest.
Today's social networks help us "assemble" or follow a tribe of those who share our interests and passion rather than wasting energy on those who may not. These technologies also appeal to our human need to belong, to contribute, to work together on things that matter, to be included, and to make a difference. Godin presents social networking as an opportunity to create a movement based on shared meaning and actionable goals.
A tribe's success depends in large part on its story or ability to say who we are, where we are going, and how we are going to get there. According to Godin, to support this process, leaders must "paint a picture of the future." When a leader and tribe have a 
compelling vision and aren't afraid to confront problems, the system changes. His belief is that if you "fall in love with the system, you lose the ability to grow."
Godin's challenge is that we need more heretics, people who take initiative, who don't ask for permission but "ask for forgiveness later." Great leaders do what they believe in, care, listen, and are responsible for how others hear them. They lead not out of fear, but out of the desire to contribute meaningfully to achieving a goal. To that end, they often deflect personal glory for pride in the collective efforts of their tribe.
I am not sure how my fellow systems thinkers would respond to this book, but I do believe too many of us are driven by fear and would rather follow than lead, as leading takes us out of our comfort zone.
I look forward to dialogue about some of Godin's beliefs about tribes and leadership. For those of you who are currently part of a "tribal cultural," what lessons are the rest of us missing?
Becky Smith has 28 years of experience in leadership, systems thinking, implementation, conflict resolution, and business ownership/ management. She currently teaches leadership, action planning, and presentation skills to Middle Eastern, North African, and Pakistan groups. As a certified facilitator, she conducts The Leadership Challenge workshops and administers the Leadership Practice Inventory. Becky has a master's degree in public administration with a minor in business management, and holds a doctorate focused on leadership, learning organizations, and systems thinking.
By Janice Molloy
For the past several months, we at Pegasus have been engaged in revisiting our organizational vision, mission, and core values. While we're all up to our eyeballs in tasks, making it challenging to carve out time for reflection, we agreed that going through this process now, together, would actually improve our effectiveness over the long run. By becoming clearer as a group about why we do what we do, what needs Pegasus could serve in the world, and how we're going to get there as a team, we will move forward with a stronger sense of direction and alignment.
We've gotten off to a good start--with a little help from our friends. A few weeks ago, systems change facilitator Tuesday Ryan-Hart led us through a day of visioning (capped off by dinner at our local Spanish restaurant, where we continued the conversation over many plates of tapas and some tasty sangria).
In addition to sparking lots of meaty conversation, both with the group as a whole and in smaller subsets, Tuesday engaged us in a physical modeling activity. In two teams, we used items from our offices--including a stuffed Kermit the frog, a plastic Hoberman 
sphere, a bottle of wine, a small globe, various plants, and assorted electronics--to create representations of Pegasus when it's working at its highest future potential. The two models, while very different visually, ended up with much overlap in themes. Some important "ahas" emerged from each that we're weaving into our vision statement.
One unexpected outcome of the session with Tuesday is that we realized our core values, as written, hold little meaning for those currently with the company. It's been stimulating to evaluate and refresh them, to bring them to life for today's workforce and today's challenges. We also continue to noodle with how we express our company's vision and mission. With changing technologies and major industry shifts for our core businesses, we want to craft something that reflects both immediate and timeless relevance, and that resonates with each member of our team and our other stakeholders.
As part of this process, we'll each articulate our personal purpose statements to feed into the organizational mission. Daniel Pink has an exercise in Drive for creating one sentence that summarizes your life's purpose; for example, "He raised four kids who became happy and healthy adults." Or "She invented a device that made people's lives easier." We're also using as inspiration the "six-word memoir" meme initiated by the online storytelling magazine SMITH.
At the end of the journey, we'll share our outcomes and reflections. In the meantime, here's a video that our president Mark Alpert showed to inspire our efforts. I hope it'll spark new ideas for you, too.
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference
At the 2009 Pegasus Conference in Seattle, Washington, John Seely Brown spoke on the topic of "Rethinking the Organization: From Scalable Efficiency to Scalable Learning." In this clip, he explains why he's optimistic about the future: The impulse by today's youth to use social technologies to collaborate and build on each other's creativity. JSB believes that the blogosphere and other web-based tools provide a powerful means for people to express provisional ideas, receive honest feedback, and evolve their thinking.
By Janice Molloy
At our 2008 conference in Boston, keynote speaker Dr. Atul Gawande kept us on the edge of our seats as he spoke about a tool shown to significantly reduce surgical complications: the checklist. Like many other participants, I had tears in my eyes as he recounted the story of a three-year-old Austrian girl who was 
brought back from the brink of death after being submerged in an icy fishpond--all because the rescue team followed a checklist to guide and streamline their response.
Not surprising, Dr. Gawande garnered stellar reviews from participants. But in the feedback on his talk, while praising the presentation, a handful of people commented that the checklist concept seemed simplistic or not applicable to their industry. Anyone who runs events learns not to take isolated comments too much to heart, but I did wonder, had we been off base in thinking that Atul's work would be relevant to the complex challenges of our cross-sectoral audience?
Gawande's recently released book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, puts to rest any concerns I might have had about the general applicability of this approach. In the book, he shows how people in occupations as diverse and complex as building skyscrapers to flying jumbo jets to evaluating multi-million dollar investments use checklists to make "the reliable management of complexity a routine." As he states, "Even the most expert among us [in virtually any endeavor] can gain from searching out the patterns of mistakes and failures and putting a few checks in place."
How often do we identify "patterns of mistakes," come up with fixes, and then fail to change our behavior? According to Gawande, the checklist provides both a discipline and a structure for capturing those learnings, embedding new routines, and continually evaluating their effectiveness. Far beyond a static collection of "to dos," at its best, this kind of resource reflects ongoing, systemic learning.
It also, interestingly, supports open communication and collaboration. Through examples from many different industries, Gawande shows how, rather than being a set of instructions dictated from above, a well-constructed checklist "pushes power out of the center" and gives professionals room to adapt and respond, based on their experience and expertise. Through trial and error in his own operating room, he found that having the circulating nurse, not the surgeon, kick off the checklist sends the message that every member of the team is responsible for the success of the surgery and has the power--and the obligation--to question the process at any point.
It's easy to see the checklist as something "other people" should use--people in other professions or with other job requirements. But Atul argues that, by using checklists, we can improve our outcomes without improving our skill, without "working harder and harder to catch the problems and clean up after them." He observes, "The checklist gets the dumb stuff out of the way, the routines your brain shouldn't have to occupy itself with . . . and lets it rise above to focus on the hard stuff."
Obviously, a checklist isn't a silver bullet--it can't solve deep-seated structural issues in an organization or an industry. Unless users regard it as a living, evolving tool, it runs the risk of becoming just another task. But taken as a way to identify and potentially eliminate failures before they happen, the checklist shows a lot of untapped promise. We're working on ours here at Pegasus; what about you?
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
photo of Atul Gawande by Sarah Viera
by Bob Stilger
Tadaima! ただいま. That's what is said in Japan when one returns home. "I'm back, I've been out in the world and I am back." And that is exactly how I felt last week during a trip to Japan. I'm a little embarrassed--はずかし--to be writing about what is happening in another country and culture. So just let me be clear--my story is as a foreigner, a visitor, and I speak only from my outsider perspective.
My relationship with Japan started 40 years ago, when I escaped there during my senior year in college. My life and learning in Japan have been a central part of who I am. It is my spiritual home. But I've never been inclined to take my work there until recently.
Last November, at the Pegasus Systems Thinking in Action Conference, I was presenting on behalf of The Berkana Institute. I was amazed to see 25 or so people from Japan. Normally there are just several. I wondered, "What's happening?" and learned that the answer is "a lot." Over the last couple of years in Japan, there has been a tremendous surge of interest in and work with systems thinking, Presencing, World Café, Appreciative Inquiry, and a host of other processes. The people I met have not only embraced these methodologies, they have created a huge opening for new ways of thinking and being. And in Japan, when something begins, it moves quickly!
Conversations soon evolved into an invitation to give a workshop and to participate in an evening Dialogue Bar. The weekend workshop with 20 participants was a combination of my work on Resilient Communities, Enspirited Leadership, Art of Hosting 
sampler, and Art of Change sampler all rolled into one. We met in circle and Open Space and World Café. We walked in silent pairs and in dialogue pairs. We modeled with clay, and the clay was so loved that it became a part of the rest of the World Café sessions. We designed the second day together, and much of the hosting was done by the participants.
Monday night was the "Dialogue Bar." More than 100 people from all walks of life and all ages came. I presented an opening keynote, in which I shared a bit of my life story as well as some of my findings about Enspirited Leadership. But they really came for conversation. Lively, animated, intense conversation about what it takes for social innovation to make enough of a difference to make a difference.
What did I learn from this amazing experience? I learned that World Café is being used extensively in business in Japan these days. People seem comfortable with the World Café format; it is intimate, yet with some protections. It is well documented and not just some "flakey" way of doing things. Heck, the prime minister even has the book The World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter! And the hunger for conversations that matter is inspiring. People know things need to change. And they know they need to be part of that change.
Japanese know how to listen to each other with their whole bodies and to hear far beyond the words. They know how to be silent with each other. They know how to be respectful. They know how to find questions. AND, there is an expression in Japan, "The nail that sticks up is pounded down."
How does one continue to listen with one's whole being AND stick up, stand up, find courage and clarity to offer one's leadership in a time of immense change? This is the question that Japan is ready for and it has been cracking wide open for more than two years. This is why there were 25 people from Japan at the Systems Thinking in Action Conference this past November where there have been four or five in the past. And this is why I'll be back for some work in May and suspect I will be returning more frequently!
Bob Stilger has been engaged in community change work since the mid-1970s. In recent years, much of his work has been in places like South Africa, Zimbabwe, India, and Brazil, where new forms of engagement are being created. He has a PhD in Learning and Change in Human Systems from CIIS and was the co-president of The Berkana Institute from 2005-2009.
By Eve M. Enslow
I lost my grandmother the week before the Pegasus conference. Even though she was 96, my Grandma was so 
energetic that her death came as a complete surprise. In responding to the challenge of organizing a memorial event on short notice, my family showed up as capable, compassionate, and courageous collaborators. The results have been truly amazing.
I wondered to myself, "What do we know and value as a family that made our collaborative effort work so seamlessly? Could these same practices be applied to collaboration at work?" These questions were particularly timely, as my colleagues and I gave a presentation on innovation that included tips for collaboration.
In my reflection, I came up with the following three observations on collaborating well with others:
1. Let people do what they do best. Each of us has unique talents and gifts. Empower each person to take on a specific job or role. Let them make decisions based on their experience and expertise. This requires trust and respect. It also takes self-discipline not to override a decision just because you might have done it differently.
2. Keep everyone informed. Communicate clearly and regularly so that everyone feels "in the know" and can offer feedback on things they feel strongly about. Be sensitive, receptive, and caring when listening to feedback.
3. Find creative ways to incorporate everyone's ideas. It ensures that participants will stay inspired and engaged in the effort, and it makes the end result better.
What other thoughts do you have about making collaborative efforts work? When have you seen a group pull something great together in a short timeframe with little or no conflict? What behaviors and values were they demonstrating? Be well, my friends!
Eve M. Enslow is a senior consultant at Telstar Consulting Services. She held both business and technical roles during her nine-year tenure at Microsoft, culminating in the position of Diversity Manager for the Windows Business Group. Her current emphasis is on consulting and executive coaching. Click here for more of her writings.